Americans on the Auction Block

by Peter Breschard / October 6th, 2012

If health care is a human right as is avowed by most industrial countries, what can be said of those corporations and human beings who profit from the current United States health care system which treats health care as a commodity?

Can anyone ethically treat a human right as a commodity?

Can any human being ethically promote unnecessary shortages of medical necessities in order to manipulate the price of said medical necessities?

Are corporations, legally compelled to create the greatest profit for shareholders, designed to increase the pain and suffering of human beings in order to increase demand for product and inflate profit margins?

If health care is a human right equivalent to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, how can individual health care be put on the auction block?

Let’s try it this way. Say the 2012 Liberty Bill provided that each citizen in the United States needed to be covered by Liberty Insurance to be provided by their employer or purchased individually. The bill calls for some governmental assistance for citizens unable to purchase policies for themselves; however, even under the rosiest of scenarios 24,000 Americans will be unable to obtain full coverage, and so will be deprived of their liberty.

Prior to the American Civil War, auctions used to be held for human beings who were unfortunate enough not to carry Liberty Insurance.

Even for those who admit that health care is a human right similar to liberty, there appear few willing to follow this concept to its logical conclusion.

Prior to the abolition of slavery in this country, there were individuals and companies involved in the slave trade and directly in the exploitation of slave labor. Companies and individuals profiting from the deprivation of another person’s human rights, how was that different from the situation today? Are not the health insurance companies profiting from the denial of universal health care to United States citizens? Is this not the equivalent of putting today’s Americans on the auction block and those who have the wherewithal to purchase their freedom from disease and illness will keep their health while those who cannot will be denied what is almost universally recognized as a human right, health care?

Are we willing to consider people and companies who profit directly from the buying and selling of a human right, health care, in the same light we consider those who buy and sell slaves? Are we willing to realize that every dime paid into health insurance companies is a dime which will be used to promote the practice of denying a human right to Americans?

Are we willing to realize that mealy mouthed politicians who proclaim that health care should be a right for every American, don’t realize that rights either are or aren’t. If health care should be a right, then it obviously isn’t one now. Any politician who isn’t for universal health care is condemning those not covered to the deprivation of a human right. The 2010 health care bill condemned at least 24,000 Americans a year to such deprivation of human rights.

It’s time to start considering health insurance companies the same way you consider slavers. It’s time to start considering those government officials who are not actively seeking universal health care the same way you view those politicians who actively supported slavery. It’s time to ostracize members of the community who actively support or trade in the present system of for-profit health care and the insurance companies that obscenely benefit from the pain and suffering of Americans.

Some say the United States system of health care is the best in the world. Some used to say the United States system of cotton delivery was the best in the world. When something’s wrong, it’s wrong.

Peter Breschard is the author of Circus Rider and My Love Affair with Barack Obama as well as other lesser works of fact and fiction. Read other articles by Peter.